HIS INSIGNIA AS A KNIGHT
OF THE BATH.

[1814.]

The famous and infamous Stock Exchange trial occupied the 8th and 9th
of June, 1814; but the sentence was deferred until the 21st of the
same month, in consequence of Lord Cochrane's demand for a new trial.
That demand was not complied with, in spite of the production
of overwhelming evidence to justify it; and the victim of Lord
Ellenborough and the tyrannical Government of the day was at once
conveyed to the King's Bench Prison. No time was lost in heaping upon
him all the indignities which, in accordance with precedent and in
excess of all precedent, might supplement his degradation.

The first was a notice of motion which would result in his expulsion
from the House of Commons. Lord Cochrane promptly availed himself of
the opening thus afforded for a public avowal of his innocence. To
the Hon. Charles Abbot, then Speaker of the House, he wrote from his
prison on the 23rd of June. "Sir," runs the letter, "I respectfully
entreat you to communicate to the Honourable House of Commons my
earnest desire and prayer that no question arising out of the late
convictions in the Court of King's Bench may be agitated without
affording me timely notice and full opportunity of attending in my
place for the justification of my character. From the House of Commons
I hope to obtain that justice of which too implicit reliance on the
consciousness of my innocence, and circumstances over which I had no
control, have hitherto deprived me. The painful situation in which I
am placed is known to the House, and I trust that I shall be enabled
to demonstrate that a more injured man has never sought redress
from those to whose justice I now appeal for the preservation of my
character and existence."

In compliance with that request, and with parliamentary rules, Lord
Cochrane was conveyed from the King's Bench Prison to the House of
Commons, and allowed to read a carefully-prepared statement of his
case, on the 5th of July, the day fixed for investigation of the
subject. From this statement it is not necessary to cite the clear
and conclusive recapitulation of the evidence adduced at the trial, or
refused admission therein because it was too convincing, in proof of
Lord Cochrane's innocence; but room must be found for some passages
illustrating the independent temper of the speaker and the perversions
of justice to which he fell a victim.

"I am not here, sir," he said, "to bespeak compa